Recently, advanced computer applications become more and more complex, and there are increasing demands on systems for processing these applications. Thus, requirement for higher computational throughput is increasing. Especially, in graphic applications, steps of data access, data operation, and data manipulation should be performed numerous times in a short time in order to realize desired visual effects. Accordingly, improved data processing ability is required for graphic applications. Especially, real-time multimedia applications need a fast processing speed of several Gigabits per second.
A graphic processing unit (GPU), which was developed to accelerate 2D or 3D graphic computations, is one of special-purpose computing processors that are optimized for graphic computations. As graphic-related computations become delicate and complex, modern GPUs are developed to have a structure resembling a multi-core central process unit (CPU). Further, due to this feature, general purpose GPU (GPGPU), in which GPU is used to realize a general purpose computation, like as CPU, is being developed.
In graphic processing, large computations should be processed simultaneously, but such computations have low mutual dependence on each other often. The GPU resembling a multi-core CPU is effective in performing computations with low mutual dependence in a parallel manner.
GPU simulators and source code dynamic analysis tools are required to model GPUs effectively, to improve performance of GPUs, and to develop novel GPUs. Due to such requirement, GPU simulators and source code dynamic analysis tools are being actively developed.